Raincloud in a jar activity



After a couple of weeks of nothing but sunshine, and hope of a wonderful Summer, the rain has returned and washed away our fun and well and truly damped our spirits. But don't despair!... (well you can for a couple of days, I sure did), we will endeavour to turn this miserable weather into a opportunity! (can you tell I'm trying to convince myself here?). So here's our cheap, fun raincloud in a jar activity.

 

 

To do the raincloud in a jar activity you will need:

• Cheap shaving foam.
• Blue/grey food colouring or paint.
• A tall jar or glass.

 

First cover the table as it's going to get messy.

Then fill the jar 3/4 with water and top up with shaving foam, the foam is your cloud.

Next, make your rainwater by colouring a little water with food colouring or paint.

Place the jar onto a piece of paper and put the rainwater to the side with a teaspoon or pipette.  

 



Depending on the age of the child you are doing this with, you could explain that the foam is a cloud, and the rainwater is a puddle and now we are going to be the sun and evaporate the puddle and 'fill' up the clouds by spooning some of the rainwater onto the cloud.

 

Slowly spoon a little water at a time onto the cloud and watch what happens...

 

It starts to rain!

 



 

It's so mesmerising, Seth and I spent ages watching the colour swirl in the water.

 

When you are finished and remove the jar from the paper you are left with a raindrop picture(depending on how messy you were!).

 

Variation - after finishing the raincloud in a jar activity, Seth asked to do it again so instead of just blue, we used a few colours, so that as the colours swirled in the water they changed and Seth got to learn about colour mixing.